This article reviews changes occurring in the U.S. industrial relations system at the work place, in collective bargaining, and at the level of strategic decision making within business and labor organizations. By relating these current developments to longer-term pressures on the post-New Deal industrial relations system, we suggest that the system is undergoing fundamental transformation. To adapt to these changes unions will need to redefine their roles at the work place by reorganizing work and fostering worker participation, adjust their wage bargaining objectives to promote employment continuity and compensation systems that are more closely tied to firm performance, and play a more direct and central role in business strategy decisions within the firm. These changes at the micro level of industrial relations are likely to be successful only if macroeconomic policies are reformed to provide a more supportive role for the labor movement in society.
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References
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1. See, for example, the 1982 presidential address to the Industrial Relations Research Association by Milton Derber, “Are We in a New Stage?”Proceedings of the Thirty-fifth Annual Meeting of the Industrial Relations Research Association (Madison, WI: Industrial Relations Research Association, 1983), pp. 1-9.
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or Daniel J. B. Mitchell, “Recent Union Contract Concessions,”Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 1: 165-204 (1982).
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3. Thomas A. Kochan, Robert B. McKersie, and Peter Cappelli, “Strategic Choice and Industrial Relations Theory and Practice,”Industrial Relations, in press.
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4. We should note that we are not contending that the old industrial relations system has completely collapsed and been replaced by a completely new system that will have no resemblence to the past as economic conditions improve. Indeed the parties have taken steps to adapt to current economic pressures in ways that preserve the option of reverting to past patterns if conditions permit. Thus, for example, the wage increases due under the 3 percent annual improvement factor in the automobile industry were postponed, not eliminated. The cost-of-living allowances due in steel and many other major contracts were temporarily suspended or diverted to other uses, not eliminated. Quality of work life and work reform efforts were introduced first as experiments, and only in a minority of instances have they now been institutionalized as a regular part of the ongoing bargaining relationship. Thus previous practices could be restored in a more favorable economic and political climate. The resurgence of such a climate is, however, very problematic.
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5. Sumner Slichter, James J. Healy, and E. Robert Livernash, The Impact of Collective Bargaining on Management (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1960).
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6. It should be noted, however, that this system of work organization predates the rise of industrial unionism and can be best understood as an adaptation to the technology and managerial practice that American industry had developed for the mass production of standardized goods. Work had previously been broken down into a discrete set of clearly defined jobs by industrial engineers, following the scientific management practices; wage determination had already been linked to these specified jobs through time-motion studies and job evaluation; many of the work standards, disciplinary procedures, and appeal processes had already been codified and formalized in the attempt by high-level management to assert control over supervisors and workers. Thus unions found many of these mechanisms already in place and sought to ensure conformity with established principles in order to curtail favoritism and capriciousness in management. In so doing they were drawn into a pattern of gradually expanding upon these rules to enhace job security further through enforcement of contractual rights.
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see also Janice A. Klein and David Wanger, “The Legal Setting for the Emergence of the Union Avoidance Strategy” (Paper presented to the MIT/Union Conference, Boston, June 1983).
8.
8. Anil Verma and Thomas A. Kochan, “The Growth and Nature of the Nonunion Sector Within a Firm” (Paper presented to the MIT/Union Conference, Boston, June 1983).
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9. Ibid., p. 12.
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and C. Fred Bergsten, “The United States and the World Economy,”The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 466: 16-17 (Mar. 1982).
11.
11. Michael Piore and Charles Sabel, The Second Industrial Divide (London: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
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12. See Audrey Freedman, Managing Labor Relations (New York: Conference Board, 1979).
13.
13. U.S., Bureau of Labor Statistics, “News Release on Major Collective Bargaining Settlements in the First 6 Months of 1983,” 28 July 1983.
14.
14. “Concession Bargaining,”Business Week, 14 June 1982, p. 66.
15.
15. Thomas A. Kochan and Harry C. Katz, “Collective Bargaining, Work Organization and Worker Participation: The Return to Plant-Level Bargaining,”Labor Law Journal, 34: 524-529 (Aug. 1983).
16.
16. Thomas A. Kochan, Harry C. Katz, and Nancy Mower, “Worker Participation and American Unions: Threat or Opportunity?” (Paper presented to the MIT/Union Leader Conference, Boston, June 1983).
17.
see also Robert B. McKersie, “Union Involvement in Entrepreneurial Decisions” (Paper presented at the MIT/Union Leaders Conference, Boston, June 1983).
